Cathy Krier: Piano Poems
Genuin Classics

Luxembourg pianist Cathy Krier uses literature as the connecting thread between five diverse pieces on Piano Poems. Composers have long looked to poetry and stories for musical inspiration, and the works featured on the seventy-five-minute release draw from the written word directly and allusively. There is, on the one hand, Sergei Prokofiev's treatment of Charles Perrault's Cinderella; on the other, there's Catherine Kontz's Murmuration and its rendering into pianistic form of birds gathering into poetic formation before migrating south. Rounding out the eclectic set are Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, Franz Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert songs, and a second world premiere recording, Konstantia Gourzi's Ithaca, all of it executed with finesse by Krier.

The album's wide range is consistent with a pianist who's collaborated with chamber outfits and choreographers and who two years ago established a new chamber music festival in her native country called the Catch Music Festival. Krier's performed in the UK and throughout Europe, from the Barbican Centre and Concertgebouw to the Kölner Philharmonie, Musikverein Vienna, and Konzerthaus Dortmund. Since 2018, she's been a piano professor at the Conservatory of the City of Luxembourg, where she lives with her family.

The literary connection for Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit (1908) comes from Aloysius Bertrand's atmospheric poem of the same name. The composer's three-part work puts even the most skilled pianist to the test, its difficulties in keeping with his professed desire to create material of “transcendental virtuosity.” In Bertrand's “Ondine,” the titular water nymph sings to lure the observer into visiting her kingdom at the bottom of a lake, subject matter that lends itself particularly well to Ravel's talent for evocation. Executed with poise by Krier, rippling arpeggios conjure the impression of a watery realm over which the nymph's seductive song resounds. The mood shifts with the second movement's arrival—as it should when Bertrand's “Le Gibet” describes the corpse of a hanged man on a gibbet as a bell tolls from a distant city. Ravel evokes the latter with a chiming chord that punctuates a slow, pensive rumination that grows slightly less oppressive as it advances. Livelier by comparison is “Scarbo,” for which Bertrand described a small goblin dancing wildly and flitting in and out of the darkness. As demanding as the work's initial movement is, “Scarbo” ups the ante in having the pianist execute dense, keyboard-spanning runs and clusters at high velocity; needless to say, Krier meets the challenge handsomely.

Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert's “Ständchen,” “Die Stadt,” and “Gretchen am Spinnrade” follow, the three based on poetry by Ludwig Rellstab, Heinrich Heine, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, respectively. Inspired by a scene from Faust I, “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (1837/8) finds her singing while spinning and thinking of Faust, and the music suggests both the cyclical rotation of the wheel and its spinner in a rapturous state of reverie. Similar to the Ravel presentation, the one of Liszt's transcriptions has a brooding part at its centre, with “Die Stadt” eerie, shadowy, and foreboding. The oft-played “Ständchen" (1840), Schubert's last song before his death at just thirty-one, is handled splendidly by Krier, its tempo fluctuations sensitively determined, her touch exquisite, and her rendering of its haunting melodies excellent.

Gourzi's inspiration for Ithaca (2023) came from the poem of the same name by Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy, in which the journey to Ithaca is described as a series of personal experiences. Using both it and, complementarily, the ten-year pilgrimage of Odysseus, Gourzi grounded her composition in a similar kind of journey. It's a single-movement piece, but three parts are delineable within its nine-minute structure, the journey's beginning, the journey itself, and the arrival at Ithaca. Krier generated the exotic sonorities and swirls at the start by applying super-balls, singing bowls, and gemstones to the strings of the grand piano. To suggest the actual journey, meditative miniatures are played using the standard keyboard, after which arrival is signified by hushed sprinkles whose reverberations trail off into the air like wisps of smoke. As mentioned, Kontz's Murmuration, composed for Krier in 2022, evokes the arcing movements of birds before migrating south. To do so, the pianist augments flickering trills with strums from the instrument's inner strings. An almost harpsichord-like timbre emerges during one episode, with insistent plunks and agitated gestures alluding to the birds' patterns. Kontz's creation is unpredictable yet arresting nonetheless.

As Prokofiev crafted his ballet for Cinderella between 1940 and 1944, he also worked on a treatment for orchestra and three separate suites for piano, Opus numbers 95, 97, and 102, the last of which is the one performed here. Prokofiev adopted a programmatic approach in his adaptation and titled the six parts accordingly; as Krier herself notes, if you're familiar with the fairy tale, you can assemble it from the movement titles. “Waltz: Cinderella and the Prince” refracts the dance form through Prokofiev's distinctive compositional lens, the result a wry, even sardonic treatment. Whereas “Cinderella's Variation” and “Pas de Châle” are endearingly carefree, “Quarrel” and “Waltz: Cinderella's Departure from the Ball” are firestorms of rambunctious activity. A suite-capping movement titled “Amoroso” has to be romantically expressive, and this one certainly fits the bill.

Piano Poems is a thoughtfully curated programme delivered superbly by Krier. Technically, there's nothing she can't do, but the recording's raison d'être isn't virtuosic display, though the pianist's brilliant technical command is definitely put to the test by the material. On this dazzling release, Krier's overriding concern is with musicality and ensuring that the material “sings” as it should. The music veritably hums at her fingertips.

October 2024